VIRGINIA BURKS SALZER, PHDDepartment of PsychologyAssociate Professor

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After completing her postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Salzer joined the faculty at Vanderbilt
where she remained until 1998. At that time, she accepted an appointment at the University
of Pennsylvania and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia where she embarked on a longitudinal,
multi-site study of the impact of parental treatment for depression on the development
of childhood psychopathology. In addition, she has received federal grant funding
to examine the impact of the treatment of childhood anxiety on parent-child interactions.
This study focuses on the impact of symptom reduction via psychopharmacological interventions
and whether or not changes in children's expression of anxious symptoms elicits alternative
parenting styles.

Dr. Salzer joined the core faculty at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
in the summer of 2004. She serves as the vice chairperson of the Institutional Review
Board and teaches courses in developmental psychology, developmental psychopathology
and dissertation research development. Most of the doctoral candidates for whom she
serves as committee chairperson have focused their research on the examination of
parent-child relationships in families in which either the parent and/or the child
are currently experiencing some form of psychopathology. In particular, the students
are examining how parents model and reinforce various forms of psychopathology, with
a long-term goal of adopting intervention programs aimed at altering the environments
in which children are exposed to aberrant parenting styles.

In addition to her work at PCOM, Dr. Salzer serves as a scientific reviewer for National
Institutes of Health grant funding programs and as an ad hoc reviewer for Developmental
Psychology, Child Development, Social Development, and Family Psychology.

Education

Dr. Salzer is a graduate of the developmental psychology program at University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After completing her PhD in 1991, Dr. Salzer began her
post-doctoral fellowship in developmental psychopathology at Vanderbilt University
with Dr. Ken Dodge. As a graduate student, her primary area of research focused on
parent-child relationships in families with aggressive and socially rejected children.
While at Vanderbilt University, she adopted a social-information processing model
and expanded her area of interests to include the examination of children's internal
social cognitive models and their impact on childhood aggression.

Publications

Selected Publications: (NOTE THAT DR. SALZER PUBLISHES UNDER THE NAME OF BURKS)

Burks, V. S. (1993, March). Family talk about friends: What mothers say and what children
learn. In G. S. Pettit & J. Mize (Chairs), Learning lessons about peer relationships:
How parents intentionally teach their children social skills. Symposium conducted
at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, New Orleans, LA.

Burks, V. S., & Parke, R. D. (1991, July). Parental and Child Representations of Social
Relationships: Mediators of child's social adjustment. Paper presented at the Biennial
Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Minneapolis,
Minnesota.